The morning after the sweeping republican mid-term victory,
President Obama offered his congratulations to the new Republican Senate. Now, two weeks later, the president has set
the stage for a congressional showdown between himself and republican
lawmakers.
Immediately following the mid-term elections, President Obama began to make
demands on the lame duck congress to put a piece of immigration reform
legislation before him or he would act on his own. The president has had six years to push
congress to move immigration reform forward, two of which his party had full
control of congress and could have pushed just about anything through they
wished, just as they did with ObamaCare, and yet he did nothing. Instead the president has chosen the lame
duck session to demand action from congress OR ELSE!
This is just another fine example of the kind of failed leadership that is routinely
displayed by President Obama who continues to place the blame of his go nowhere
agenda on the inactions of congress. But
blaming congress carries no water as a countless number of his predecessors
managed to get a great deal of work accomplished while working with a mixed bag
of congressional make-ups.
Past Presidents and their Congress
Take Richard Nixon for example! Despite
his many flaws, Nixon was able to work with his democratic congress. Had their working relationship been better,
Nixon would have been more successful with is domestic policy agenda but
congress did little to object to his foreign policy which was quite
successful. Nixon’s demise was not one
of contention between him and his democrat controlled congress, his demise was
of his own making.
It is hard to fairly assess any aspect of the Ford presidency as it came under
such a peculiar circumstance and all would be pure speculation.
Jimmy Carter had a contentious relationship with congress but with the
democratic faction, not the republicans.
Carter, trying to do what he believed to be the right thing for the
country, almost always came in conflict with the views of the very liberal
congress of the time. Carter didn’t
“play ball” with his congress who essentially made a lame duck president out of
their party leader, but at least Carter tried.
Ronald Reagan enjoyed a very good relationship with congress throughout his 2
terms as president. While republicans
did hold the Senate for Reagan’s first 6 years in office they never held the House. But despite never having full control of
congress, Reagan’s conservative policies and leadership style seem to bode well
with the democrats of his time and made for a very productive, successful and
fulfilling 8 years for both the president and the congress.
Bush Senior was a single term president which typically indicates that the
president did not share a good relationship with his own party and to some
extent this was true. During his term in
office republicans did not carry the Senate or the House although this was really
not the issue. Bush 41 ran on a platform
that promised a similar administration that of his predecessor Ronald Reagan,
the idea being that he would continue with the successes of the previous 8
years and not make any radical changes.
It sounded like a good plan but something had to be done with the
mounting deficit created during the Reagan years.
Having already made the infamous promise of “Read My Lips, No New Taxes”, Bush
41 lost his own parties support when in the end he had to concede to democratic
pressure which blocked his desire to impose tax cuts as a solution in lieu of
the typical tax hikes favored by democrats.
It was not due to a bad working relationship with congress that caused
Bush 41 his problems it was the breaking of a single promise, that voting
republican’s held him to, that cost him a second term in office.
Bill Clinton, much like President Obama, had the luxury of a democratic
controlled congress his first two years in office however, failed to capitalize
on it. After democrats lost both the House
and Senate in the mid-terms, things became quite contentious between the
president and the republican held congress.
But Clinton remained popular and after being re-elected did a bit of a
reset and as his relationship with congress improved significantly as did his
ability to move parts of his agenda forward.
Even through all the missteps and scandals that surrounded much of Clinton’s
second term, a great deal was accomplished or at least that is the opinion of many. No matter, on the subject of the president’s
ability to get legislation moved through congress, Clinton seemed to manage
well in an environment where most would have predicted him to have failed.
Overall, George W Bush shared a reasonable relationship with congress. During his first two years in office the
congress was split with the Senate belonging to the democrats and the House
held by republicans. Wanting to set a
tone of bi-partisanship, Bush 43 avoided conflict with congress as much as he
could and during those first years he never handed out a single veto, in fact,
it was not until about 2 years into the full republican controlled congress
that Bush exercised his veto power for the very first time.
Bush 43 enjoyed the comfort of a republican controlled congress during the
middle 4 years of his two terms in office however, his relationship soured
during his final two years when democrats took over the House. Looking ahead to 2007 democrats chose to
politicized the Iraq war, a war they almost unanimously supported in the onset,
an action (it was never declared a war, big mistake by Bush) that received full
congressional approval and a war that in the end democrats turned into a
political opportunity to demonize the Bush presidency in an effort to score
political points heading into the next election cycle. It was a hypocritical but effective move by
democrats which turned public sentiment away from the original intent of the
Iraq war and the fact the democrats were for it before they were against it. None the less, Bush 43 worked well with his
congress through all but the very end of his presidency.
That makes a half dozen of the most recent presidents all of which seemed to
manage well with congress in most cases.
So how does President Obama stack up to the leadership of his
predecessors? Let’s take a look.
President Obama and his Congress
Then Senator Barack Obama not only campaign on a platform of Hope and Change
for the nation, he also vowed that he would restore the people’s faith in their
government and remove its dysfunction.
In a 2007 campaign speech Obama said that he would "turn the page
on the ugly partisanship in Washington and pass a bipartisan agenda in
Congress.” Obama also wrote, in his
Blueprint for Change, that his administration would increase transparency so that ordinary Americans can
understand their government and trust that their money is well spent and also that
his administration would end the practice of writing legislation behind closed doors. Whether or not he had good intention when he
spoke/wrote these words we will never know but his campaign vow of transparency
and a united congress evaporated about a minute after sitting down in his new
office for the first time.
While they may not have fully agreed with the particular path the newly seated
president chose, republican lawmakers wishing to work with Obama and the
democratic controlled congress, in large, gave their support to the president’s
early plans to move the economy forward.
And with his massive spending package signed, sealed and delivered with
the consent of congress, Obama cleared his desk and set his sights on
healthcare reform!
The relationship between the president and republican lawmakers went downhill
rapidly from this point forward. What
was later realized as little more than political showmanship, the bi-partisan
effort to craft a healthcare reform bill was soon taken behind closed doors
with a ‘Democrats Only’ sign hanging from them.
The fight between the parties grew contentious as republicans liked less
and less what they were learning about the partisan healthcare bill being
drafted. And the contentiousness spilled
over to other agenda items as the president became highly defensive of anyone
who challenged any portion of his progressive agenda.
The dam broke when, through the less than ethical actions of Harry Reid, the Patient
Protection Affordable Care Act bill, better known as ObamaCare, was moved
forward by both the House and the Senate with ZERO republican support and
exactly enough democratic votes to pass the bill to the president to be signed
into law. ObamaCare was not the only
point of contention between democrats and republicans early in Obama’s term as
president but it was the issue that cost democrats their majority in the house
in 2010.
President Obama having failed to take advantage of his party’s monopoly on
congress during his first two years in office and the loss of democratic
control of the House left him with a stack of unfinished business. The big ticket agenda items, of the president’s,
were all far too far to the left to foster any support from house republicans at
least not without some compromise, especially after demonized them almost
non-stop from the start of his presidency.
Fast forward to 2014, as the president continued to swim in the pool of his own arrogance,
the thought never crossed his mind that democrats could lose control of the
Senate. Now having done so, the
president finds himself ill prepared to deal with the very republicans he has
for the past four years blamed for all the inactions of congress.
Having lost the cover of Harry Reid and not wanting to compromise on an
immigration reform deal with republicans, President Obama has decided that he
will use his executive pen to circumvent congress and take whatever unilateral
actions are available to him and glue together some type of makeshift immigration
reform using a number of executive orders. This action, if carried out, will
set a very negative tone for the remaining two years left in his presidency,
adding to the dysfunction that has existed between the legislative and
executive branches during his term and will likely wash away any hope of
democrats remaining in control of the White House come 2016.
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